Frustrations!

Ever since my computer automatically updated to Mac OS Mojave, I have had MAJOR problems with blogger. There have been other problems too but I think I have most of those resolved. Why would an update change Photoshop's accessibility and not allow me to work on a photo???

I have finally been able to release my blog from the admin email that I never assigned. The problem is that once I released it, I removed that email. Along with it went the blogs I follow. I have recreated the list - I think I have found all of the blogs again. And I've had to return to that email to be able to do anything but I can't get back what I deleted??? 

I can now comment on some blogs including my own but sometimes I can't???. I am finding that I can comment mostly on blogs without embedded comments.  I just found that comments are no longer coming in by email - that happened once a while back. I think I remember how to fix that.

I've changed my comments to be in a popup window - I prefer them embedded but I seem to have a better chance of being able to post if they are in a popup window - who knows why???! I'm sorry you have to go through that reCaptcha stuff when posting - I know I hate it but it is what it is.

I'm not sure where the template is for my blog - it seems to be missing. That means that there are all kinds of things I can't change.

This has been going on for over a week - it's quite annoying. Please understand if I don't comment or reply to your comments. There are only so many hours a day that I'm willing to devote to this ... I want to quilt!

And time goes by...

The days have been passing by but I haven't accomplished much. Between the cold and my back I spend a lot of time resting and I think it's working - my cold is much better. The back improvement is slow but there is improvement. 

I celebrated my 70th birthday! How can I be that old??! On my birthday we took a little road trip to some orchards in Wisconsin. We brought home apples to eat, to dry, to make applesauce, to make pie, and to freeze. It's taking a while but everything is getting done. 

I love apple chips dried with a little cinnamon and sugar.

I made applesauce with Cortland, Jonathon, McIntosh, and Cameo apples. I used the Instant Pot and cooked the cored apples with 1/2 cup water. When they were done, I put them though a food mill which takes care of the skins. I think the Jonathon skins are responsible for us having pink applesauce this year.

I bought a mini pie pan from Pampered Chef and finally got around to making some little apple pies one day. They are cute and good! Four are in the freezer. It's a little hard for me to roll pie dough right now so I decided to freeze some of the apples for pies in the future.

One evening we went to a small cemetery that is high on a hill. The sunset and moonrise were just minutes apart and the photographer decided he was going so I tagged along. There were no clouds but there was lots of dust in the air so there was still a little color in the sky. The farmers around here are combining soybeans and it creates lots of dust.

sunset

moonrise

I was on the west side of the cemetery looking at Ray on the other side photographing the moon.

I've been playing with the flannel that I bought on our Michigan trip. I cut the pieces for a Take Five quilt. That top is pretty much together. Now I'm trying to put together a quilt with the leftovers. This is on the design wall.

I tried to edit pictures in Photoshop the other day and it wouldn't work. It's an older version and I just updated my MacBook Pro to Mojave - ugh! It took a few hours but I finally got that figured out. Then I decided to tackle my problem with posting on blogs. That took most of another day; I'm happy that I can post again but not happy that I can't fix the real problem. Don't you just love computer problems??!

Hopefully I'll be spending more time sewing in the next few days.

Home Again

Friday dawned cloudy and cold. We packed the car. Before we left, Ray asked for the cold medicine - oh, oh, I shared my cold. He said he didn't feel too bad so we headed south with our original plan.

We decided to check out the Rural Arts Roadtrip east of Lake Winnebago in Wisconsin. Lots of people seemed to be on the road trip. 

We stopped at three of the 10 places. We enjoyed the things we saw, the many artists that we met, and the places we visited but it really was cold out - about 38 degrees with wind. Many of the exhibitors were in outbuildings or tents. The third stop was super crowded so we decided it was time to move on. 

Ray wanted to check out the Horicon Marsh. We stopped at the Visitor Center and got some information. Today was not the day for us to be out hiking - did I mention it was cold? And we both have colds.

We decided to head home and even saw the sun on the way. We arrived just before 6pm and unpacked. Now it's time to just relax and get warm!

A Good Day in Door County

By the time I went to bed Tuesday night, I realized that I had a cold. Ugh! I spent a very rainy Wednesday napping and watching movies. Ray said he didn't mind since the rain just kept coming.

Today, Thursday, we woke to cooler temperatures (mid 40s), heavy winds, and clouds but no rain! And I feel much better. We decided to tour the peninsula. We headed north through many small towns. 

The fall colors were gorgeous! And there were bits of blue sky!

We shopped a little - it was very cold to be out walking. We spent some time in Peninsula State Park.  The sun made an appearance every so often! 

The waves were really crashing in.

 The Eagle Bluff Lighthouse in Peninsula State Park.

These berries/cherries, which I'm sure are not pie cherries, made me want to make cherry pie. When I was in high school, I was a Cherry Pie Queen and I ALWAYS used Door County frozen cherries to make my pies.

Still in Peninsula State Park, we stopped at Nicolet Beach.

We drove on...

At Eagle Panorama, you can easily tell where the sun was shining.

We left the State Park and had lunch - burgers at Wilson's Ice Cream Parlor. We passed on the ice cream (it's really cold out) but we did have Wilson's 1906 Home-Brewed Draft Root Beer. We don't drink pop anymore except for a root beer every so often. This was a great treat.

 Back on the road...

We stopped at The Clearing Folk School near Ellison Bay. During the week, you can only visit the Visitor's Center; visitors are not allowed to tour the grounds except in docent lead tours on the weekends. Even though we couldn't see much, it made me want to go there for a class even more. It is such a beautiful area. 

Inside the Visitor's Center, there is now an area that show more of the architecture of the other campus buildings. I loved this door and doorway to the outside.

When we got to the end of the peninsula, we backtracked for a while. We stopped at the Seaquist Orchard Stand and bought two cider donuts and two pumpkin donuts. They were really good! We also bought some Door County Cherries; a pie is in the future. 

Then we drove across the peninsula to go to Cana Island Lighthouse. It's a few mile drive and when you finally get there, you walk across a causeway to get to the lighthouse.  When we got there, we found that heavy winds were causing the water to cross the causeway in high waves which meant no one was going across.

We just continued on toward 'home'.

When we got back on the main road, highway 42, the traffic had really picked up. There is a festival in Sister Bay this weekend that seems to be beginning tonight. 

We leave here tomorrow. Our plans are still in the making. What happens next really depends on the weather. So..., we'll just see what tomorrow brings.

Travel Day

This morning when we said goodbye to the UP, it was cloudy but just sprinkling. We loved the scenery, the food, and the nice people that we met.

On our way south, we made one last stop at the Trenary Home Bakery. We decided we needed a little more Trenary Toast. We decided that we had to skip the cinnamon rolls today but it was HARD!

Back on the road, we crossed a bridge over the Rapid River near Rapid River, Michigan, and Ray loved the scenery. We turned and went down a street a little ways and there was another bridge crossing the river. Here are my shots:

When we were ready to turn around, we drove a little bit and saw Rapid River Falls Park. So we checked it out.

Lunch was in Oconto, Wisconsin, at The Dockside. I forgot to take a picture of my Shrimp Po' Boy. It was delicious. Ray had BBQ pork with slaw. I think this was the best restaurant service we've had in a restaurant on this trip!

We saw color on the way - I think the leaves are pretty much at their peak color in the UP but not quite there a number of miles south in Wisconsin.

We saw the SUN and blue sky on the way (but only for a few minutes). 

Oh yes, we saw rain on the way too. 

We are now in Egg Harbor, Wisconsin, which is in Door County. We managed a short walk after we moved into our rental. We are very close to the harbor.

We got back to our apartment as the first raindrop hit followed by a downpour. 

Tonight we are just taking it easy - watching a little Netflix and listening to the heavy rain.

More Rain and a Visit to Trenary Home Bakery

Today, Monday, was another rainy day. We headed to the Trenary Home Bakery because we've never been there. We weren't really sure what to expect but it was fairly close and something to do.

We had to sample the famous Trenary Toast. The sample is not a tiny piece, it's a whole slice! We tried the cinnamon and it was really good. Then we tried the vanilla and liked that too. Then we tried the rye bread; of course, that was also good. We tried some raspberry jam on the rye bread and like that. We had heard about the cinnamon rolls so we sat down and ordered a couple rolls with hot tea. We thoroughly enjoyed our treat and we were full!

The toast has a shelf life of 1 year! You did not read that wrong - it's shelf life is really 365 days! So we purchased some to take home. I didn't get any pictures - it was raining pretty good so I didn't get any photos outside and I didn't even think to ask/take pictures inside.

On the way back, we stopped at Ackerman Lake - it is just off of Highway 94. It was raining but the colors are really at their peak and we just had to get a few more photos.

This is the very short road we were on at Ackerman Lake. I love the canopy of trees.

I also tried a few pictures from the car in between the windshield wipers.

Since we have to leave tomorrow, we decided we should get a few things into the car in between downpours. That means we are doing a little packing. I can't believe that my fabric took up a whole suitcase. Hmmm, I'll just have to find somewhere else for the stuff that was in that suitcase. Priorities!

Seney National Wildlife Refuge

Today we spent some time at the Seney National Wildlife Refuge. It was cold and cloudy but still enjoyable. The refuge is over 95,000 acres - way too much to cover in a day or a week.  A friendly volunteer suggested we begin with the 1.5 mile Pine Ridge Nature Trail hike. 

We found lots of pine trees which meant we did not see as much color as we've been seeing. We were almost always in sight of water.

The path was nicely groomed.

We didn't see a lot of wildlife but we saw lots of the beavers' handiwork.

It was a peaceful walk.

Most of the ferns had turned yellow.

There were lots of cattails. Many had already gone to seed.

Every so often, there were pretty leaves.

The trail took many forms; here it was a wooden boardwalk over a marshy area.

There were some aspen trees. I love seeing and hearing the quaking aspen. I did not see any aspen in the refuge that had changed color yet. We did see a few other colorful trees though.

If it hadn't been such a cold, damp day, I would have enjoyed spending some relaxing time in spots like this.

I loved this pop of color across the water.

We found lots of berries but weren't sure if they were edible.

We even saw a few tiny flowers.

We saw eagles, ducks, geese, swans, an Irish Wolfhound, and this cute little beaver. The Irish Wolfhound was under a year old, huge, and a little our of control. He was taking his master for a walk.

These berries were on a tree.

I loved these leaves which were just outside of the Visitor Center.

After our hike, we drove the Marshland Wildlife Drive. It takes 1 - 2 hours and is a gravel road. It's one way with a speed limit of 15 miles per hour. It was a pretty drive with some colorful trees.

We even found some reflections.

On our way 'home' from the Refuge, we stopped in Shingleton, MI. Ray had seen a small bridge running parallel to the road there and wanted to see if he could get some good reflection shots from it. We could see the bridge but had to do some hunting to get to it. 

We finally hiked down a 4-wheeler/snowmobile trail. Ray was pretty excited when we found color on the way.

The bridge was closed to traffic since the trail did not continue on the other side. However, we were easily able to walk onto the bridge and I took this picture.

Sadly there wasn't much color in the area. The wind started blowing and even this reflection was gone a minute later.

We just got home from doing some light painting tonight. Light painting is a photography thing that is fairly new to Ray. We were at a waterfall in the dark. Ray used a long exposure on his camera while he shined a strong flashlight at the falls. Amazingly he got some neat pictures! I was the helper and am now happy to be 'home' in the warmth.

Tomorrow is our last full day here. We've done everything  on my list (visit the quilt shop, enjoy each day) and everything on Ray's list except a fabulous reflection shot, a shot of a moose, and a shot of a black bear. Maybe we'll be able to check off something even though it's supposed to rain all day.